SAN FRANCISCO Inventors Develop High-Tech Device To Help The Visually Impaired

September 11, 20188:38 am

A group of Bay Area teens was mingling with Silicon Valley’s top dogs, sharing a new device and app that help the visually impaired.

In a room filled with tech giants and the Silicon Valley elite, the recent grads from Lowell and Dublin High Schools were getting a lot of attention. What began as a high school project went on to win the Visa Developer Hackathon landed the bright teens a coveted spot at this year’s TechCrunch Disrupt.

The idea was inspired by their friend’s dad who lost his vision to glaucoma and had to buy a $10,000 device to help him get around.

“We wanted to make something a lot more cheap, a lot more accessible and empower visually impaired people,” said young developer Devin Mui.

It’s called Blindsight. It is a wearable device that pairs with an app to help the visually impaired with daily tasks.

The device uses vibrations to guide the user toward objects and machine learning to identify faces. The device also uses Visa’s open-source technology to help make payments and shop, which is how the teens won the Visa Hackathon.

“When we heard about the idea and the fact that there are millions of visually impaired people around the world, we felt like this solution would be able to help bring payments to that population,” said Visa spokesperson Charles Tsang

“We hope to someday slim this down to more of a smart watch profile, so we’re trying to maybe get it down to an Apple Watch size,” said Mui.

The team also made it to the semifinals at TechCrunch Disrupt, but was unable to make the finals. However, they are still hopeful that they will get funding and eventually bring this product to market, changing the lives of millions of people who are visually impaired.

About Nelson Régo

Nelson Régo is the owner and founder of the Cool Blind Tech website since November of 2012. Nelson launched the first show on March 14, 2013. He also directs the website as a whole, hiring staff, originating new shows, and approving all content.

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1. From Dalton Lane:

What do you think about the new braille note touch? I have played around with it some but I’m still currently using an apex. My cool pick would probably have to be the braille note touch though. I enjoy exploring the different types of accessible peaces of technology.

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We want to use the game as a proof of concept to demonstrate that mainstream commercial games have the potential to have accessibility navigation implemented into their design. If this game is successful, our next step will be to create a generalized API that can be used in a wide variety of VR settings, ranging from video games to potentially even drafting software.

Make sure to enable accessibility mode by going into the config.ini file and changing access=0 to access=1. We are still building out a configuration application for the game. Sorry for the inconvenience. However, once you have accessible mode running you can experience it for yourself.Website

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